


Of Humanity (In a Shell of Machinery)

by ArtsyDeath



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Body Dysphoria, Body Worship, Character Study, Cyborg Genji Shimada, Friends With Benefits, Introspection, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22049287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyDeath/pseuds/ArtsyDeath
Summary: McCree's hair is brown, long, wavy and sticking out in odd places from where he’d slept, his chin scruffy.Genji doesn’t even have a chin left to grow a beard on.-Or: finding humanity in a body more metal than flesh can be complicated but sometimes there's a cowboy to lend a helping hand (and mouth).
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Genji Shimada
Comments: 3
Kudos: 105





	Of Humanity (In a Shell of Machinery)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nylazor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nylazor/gifts).



There’s a strange disconnect in finding himself in the shape he is and it creeps up on him, frustration and annoyance, a strange warped sort of guilt and a buzz at the back of his head as he stares down at his metallic hands

The chopsticks sticks out of his MRE, snapped in half, and Genji breathes out with a hiss of the vents meant to keep him cool.

“Whatever did those things to do you, partner?” McCree’s voice makes the annoyance deepen and his mouth curls before he drops the mask down, sealing it shut and hiding his ruined face from view before he turned around to look at the opening to the kitchen.

Ruffled, clearly missing a few hours of sleep, one hand slipped beneath a loose t-shirt to scratch at his chest and loose checked pants pooling at his feet. Likely Reyes’, if Genji was to take a gamble – the leader of Blackwatch were strangely fond of the ragtag cowboy and Genji had found himself under the sharp eyes of the man on more than one occasion.

He’s frankly surprised Reyes had allowed the two of them on the mission at all – Genji knew he was still under suspicion. Overwatch might have pieced him together but he’s still _Shimada-gumi._ His own brother had butchered him but what was to say what he’d been capable of had he been the faster one?

The _older_ one.

His metallic fingers curl with only a distant sort of feeling translated through ruined nerve endings wired through his new body.

“Why are you up?” he asks abruptly.

McCree is a rugged sort of handsome, Genji knows, while his own form draws nothing but derisive looks and pity.

McCree who would find it in him to, even jokingly, flirt with just about everything that moves hadn’t as much as spared him a wink during the months they’d known each other and Genji wonders just what that says about his own humanity. More wiring than flesh, eyes green beneath the plates, his hair limp and flat from where he just hadn’t been bothered to go through the motions of getting it clean.

“’s not that early,” McCree says, a blatant lie for its nearing three am, and Genji gives him a long stare from behind the visor. “The food that bad?” he asks, kicking a chair out and sinking down upon it.

His hair is brown, long, wavy and sticking out in odd places from where he’d slept, his chin scruffy.

Genji doesn’t even have a chin left to grow a beard on.

He wordlessly shoves the food over and McCree picks the chopsticks out and throws them over his shoulder, hitting the trashcan as he leant back on the chair legs to reach the spork on the counter before letting it down with a _clack._

“Mighty kind of you,” McCree says, shoving a spoonful into his mouth.

Sometimes Genji thinks it’s a wonder his body doesn’t run on oil – Angela had run him through so many issues and complications that could happen with his body that he felt entirely disconnected from the reality of it.

“So, what’s botherin’ you?” McCree pries as he’s made short work of half of the gruel before slowing down, planting one elbow on the table and dropping his chin into the palm of his hand. “You look unusually morose. I mean, the whole _brooding thing_ you’ve got going for you is, like, normally spared for the morning hours.”

The spork is curled idly between fleshy fingers with a dexterity that Genji lacks and his eyes lingers on them.

The tool digs a large spoonful, shoving it between lips that has a lingering sort of curl at the corner, a sign of good humour, Genji knows, and yet something ugly curls inside of him in response.

“Anyone forced to spend more than an hour with no one for company but yourself would find themselves up in the middle of the night,” Genji says flatly.

McCree snorts a laugh, dragging the spork out.

“Sounds to me that you’re frustrated,” the cowboy drawls. “I could leave if you want to, you _know_.” He dips his eyes suggestively.

The table snaps in half and McCree’s hand drops to his belt, empty of Peacekeeper, as the food tumbles to the ground in a mess and a crash.

Genji’s vents hisses as the cooling system kicked up in response to his own heating emotions and a tremble works through him, his hands remaining still, metal curled around wood.

Machine, not human.

“Sorry,” he says, not really meaning it, but McCree is staring at him and he forces his hand to open up, releasing a large chunk of wood.

“It’s, uh, alright,” McCree says slowly, clearing his throat. “Wasn’t any good anyway.”

-

The mission finishes up a week later and McCree never makes any mention of the incident. They return to base and Genji disappears to his haunts, keen on avoiding any contact unless he has to.

He tires of the stares, the morbid sort of curiosity that tracks him. Sometimes he rather wishes the roar of Hanzo’s dragons had deafen him – as it is he’s all too aware of the bets made on him.

_Can he feel? How much is machine and how much is flesh? Are we sure he’s not just an omnic playing pretend?_

_Can he even, you know-_

Genji knows. The crude laughter does nothing to help with his frustration, his anger, the clawing violent need to lash out and let them know just how much he _feels,_ somehow, still.

But instead he remains the silent, untouchable assassin that Blackwatch made of him at the cost of his survival. They could tell him all they wanted that he didn’t need to stay here, that he was free to do as he wished. But he’d seen the money Overwatch had drowned into him – project names and schematics – and the reality of not understanding his body, unable to fix it and take care of it were anything to happen.

Genji is alive because, in the big picture of things, he was already as good as dead by the hands of his elder brother and what was a bit of unethical experimentation on a _Shimada?_

Months of pain, of raw nerves wired into metal, trapped and made into a mockery of _Genji._

Would Hanzo even recognise him? Knowing his brother the stubborn idiot would sooner drive another sword through his chest then spare the time to wonder.

How could Hanzo see his little brother in this metallic cage when Genji didn’t as much as recognise himself?

He gives the curl of a growing fringe a small tug – remembering late nights away from their parent’s eyes, Hanzo long-suffering and gruff but _there_ as he helped Genji dyeing his hair.

Green had been his favourite.

Now it’s just dark, dull and limp.

A knock on the door draws his visor towards it.

A moment pass, another knock soon after, and he breathes out with a hiss as he steps out of the bathroom and yanks the door open.

Stares silently at McCree as the man sneaks the hand raised to knock into a pair of strangely normal jeans.

“Howdy.” There’s no hat but his smile is charming and there’s a bottle of sake tucked beneath his arm.

Genji hesitates but steps aside and McCree doesn’t spare a moment of hesitation before he disappears inside, metal clicking, and Genji’s head tilts down to the spurs on the back of his boots.

That, at least, is familiar and he closes the door on them both.

“You’ve been hiding away from almost a month now – even Reyes is getting concerned,” McCree tells him, craning around to take in the bare walls as he placed the bottle down on the bedside table.

His quarters are small – bed immediately to the right upon entering, a bathroom to the left and a couch crammed up against the wall opposite the entrance. Blackwatch is run in secret and there’s only so much expanses that could be shuffled off from Overwatch to keep its less savoury kin run.

Genji honestly doesn’t care. It’s not like he needs much and his holo pad has enough books to last him two lifetimes.

McCree turns around towards him, throwing a pack of cards up with a glint in his eyes as he caught it.

“Up for a game?” he offers.

-

Genji ends up pulling out a whisky from his own personal stash half-way through after one too many painful grimaces around the sake from the other and McCree makes grabby motions for it, popping the lid off and drinking straight from the bottle as Genji folded his fingers together in his lap.

He could deal with the cards fine enough but he left the shuffling to McCree. Angela might be convinced he’d be able to get the fine details of such simple tasks down eventually but it had only been some two months since he crushed the door handle to his room in a moment of forgetfulness and had to spend a painful hour trying to get it back to some semblance of working order.

McCree had never made mention of the strangely bent metal but that’s why Genji tolerates him to the extent that he does – that and he knows that McCree isn’t in on the betting made on him.

He might find McCree frustrating but out of all the people at Blackwatch he and Reyes at least treated him like something human.

Genji had always been a social creature, unlike his brother, and he misses a lot of things.

“Ah – that’s the good stuff!” McCree smacks his lips, placing it down beside him without bothering to close it up, grabbing for the cards, black with golden marking, making short work of the shuffling before dealing it out. “Yah know, I came here for a reason,” McCree remarks as Genji carefully draws the cards up from the ground and turns them around.

“You mean the drinking and cards were just an excuse? Shame on you,” he says as he discards two on his hand.

“Eh, I’ve never been the sort of hide my intentions and I think you’d prefer me being up front about this. The booze is just a bonus.” McCree gives him a lidded look of consideration and had he been anyone else Genji would have found himself on edge as he lifts the sake bottle.

But McCree had taken a single look at his mouth and then politely kept his eyes away and Genji wraps what remains of his lower lip, allowing the upper one to compensate as he took a long draft of it, tongue flicking out to catch a stray drop before it could roll down the metal plating that made up his chin.

“So.” McCree clears his throat. “Hear me out before you try to murder me, alright?”

Genji slowly lowers the sake bottle.

“’Cause I have a feeling you might just take this the wrong way but I promise I have nothing but good intentions.”

“Is that so?” Genji asks suspiciously.

“Cross my heart,” McCree says with a strangely intent look from the normally easy going guy and that, if anything, reluctantly loosens some of his immediate wariness.

“Alright.” Genji folds his cards together and places them aside. “I’ll hear you out.”

-

In the end he can’t say what makes him agree.

Maybe the alcohol had mellowed him out more than he first though (Genji knows it’s an excuse, a desperate sort of one as McCree’s eyes hovers too close to his own, brown searching green, and his body hisses low in response to his own rising heat).

McCree is lucky Genji isn’t his brother.

Hanzo would have killed him and buried his body, no doubts about it, but Genji-

Genji isn’t his brother, this distinction he clings to, even here amongst murderers on a payroll.

A thumb brushes soft beneath his eye and he feels the pressure of a palm like a prickle of _too much_ even as half of it layers against metal as McCree leans down with a whiff of whisky breath before lips slanted against what remained of his.

He’s painfully aware of the way McCree’s stubble must brush against the metal of his chin in a way that Genji would have found painfully attractive but now just scrapes with a noise that rings in his ears as he clumsily responds. His jaw is stiff, the metal climbing high on his lower lip, but McCree is slow and patient and the buzz of anxiety slowly dwindles down as the other makes a low noise of encouragement.

McCree’s lips are full, a bit chapped, but also soft as he shifts his head to find what works – discovering quickly that Genji had more movement on the right side and dipping into his mouth with a curl of his tongue and, this is familiar – Genji knows the rhythm, tilting, one hand reaching up automatically before he catches himself.

 _More,_ his heart demands, craving desperately, but he's wary of his own strength, all too aware of what a slip of attention could mean.

“You can touch,” McCree murmurs, pulling back, brown eyes hooded and dark and Genji’s chest curls with liquid satisfaction. It might just be a response to the physical stimulation but there’s _something_ there.

“It might get stuck,” Genji cautions, spreading out his metallic fingers, the folds where hair would inevitable get stuck visible in a flex of them.

“What’s a bit of hair pulling between partners?” McCree smirks, dipping down and catching him into another kiss.

There’s little sense of touch in his fingers but Genji’s hand tangles in wavy brown hair and McCree groans, pressing closer, and – this isn’t so bad, Genji thinks, shifting his hips to as McCree levelled more heavily upon him until he was practically in his lap, all soft thighs and a press of his crotch against the planes of Genji’s metallic belly.

Genji sincerely thinks that McCree hadn’t gotten this plan past point A and he wonders what the other will make out a body that Genji himself doesn’t understand as lips works against his.

He might just be good with the kissing, to be honest. It had been too long and McCree is handsome and the proposal had been bumbling if a bit endearing once Genji had managed to look past his own self-loathing and disbelief.

He wonders if its pity that makes McCree extend the offers.

Knows the man well enough that it cannot be the case.

But then, how much can Genji really claim to be able to read when his own brother had butchered him beyond all recognition and he hadn’t seen it coming?

“You’re thinking too much.” McCree nips his lower lip with a scrape of metal as they catch too low before meeting flesh.

“Unlike you, I like using my brain,” Genji huffs as the other draws back, giving him a long considering look.

Genji has to give him credit – McCree had made every attempt to be tactful, in his own way, in proposing this and he was clearly trying to uphold some semblance of it even now.

_You look like you need to release some tension and – well, I happen to have a hand to spare, if you catch my drift?_

McCree hadn’t made much comment on his body, bare their first meeting, which had been awkward on both sides before Reyes hit his charge over the back of his head and told him to _man up._

“Alright, you’re going to have to work with me here,“ McCree admits. “Don’t want to accidentally send you into a cardiac arrest by pressing the wrong thing. Angela would kill me.”

Because Genji is Angela’s project – time and money invested into making him what he is.

It tastes bitter on his tongue.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Genji tilts his head. “I don’t know what made you propose in the first place but my body isn’t really-“

“Hey,” McCree interrupts, poking a fingers against his chest and leaning forward. “Only reason I didn’t propose before this is because I knew you’d bite my hand rather than allow it anywhere near you.” Not, entirely untrue, Genji has to concede. “You’re a good guy, a bit too broody at times but that can be forgiven.” McCree’s eyes are dark brown, his left eyebrow a bit bushier than his right. “You want this?”

Does he? Genji had been curious to see just how far McCree would take it before coming up short, disgusted and put-off from the ruin of what he is.

Genji misses touch. Hanzo had always indulged him even with his own distaste for it, and what reassurance he didn’t find in his brother’s touch he had found among friends and hook-ups, girlfriends and boyfriends, anyone who caught his fancy.

He’d strived on it.

No-one has touched him other than medical personal since Hanzo’s sword bit into him.

He's been with Blackwatch for more than a year now.

Genji can second guess all he wants but at the end of the day he just wants the press of flesh against what remains of his. A confirmation that he’s more than the metal that covers him from head to toe (not that he had any toes left to cover, but all the same).

Whether McCree had made his offer out of pity or some warped sense of curiosity it is still _something_.

“I do,” he gets out finally.

“Then work with me,” McCree’s lips presses surprisingly soft against his cheek, stubble scraping against his skin.

-

 _Is it selfish to want?_ Genji wonders, abdomen quivering as McCree’s tongue worked up the scarred planes of his chest.

There are places where touch cut off completely, places where everything had ramped up too high, metal crawling beneath and stretching above, but McCree is far more stubborn than Genji had originally given him credit for.

Hands touching him, eyes watching him, measuring his response as Genji’s voices hitches, eyelids lidding and heart pounding inside his chest, vents hissing and whirring as he kept one eye on the numbers inside the mechanical eye, groaning and whimpering as McCree worked a dark mark on his skin with a stretch of his lips.

It's overwhelming. It's addicting. It's a vindication of his own humanity tangled in arousal but translated differently.

“You’re really quite the sight,” McCree murmurs and there’s a genuine sort of appreciation in the dark lidded gaze.

If Genji had any doubts about his intentions then McCree’s cock straining against his jeans is the kind of unavoidable evidence that he could still be wanted.

His own cock is missing – not exactly a thing to be spared a thought (and Genji tries not to think too hard on what had become of it, discarded and lost in the bits of flesh that had been cut from him), but McCree makes no remark on it as he grinds his pelvis against Genji’s metallic body with a low groan against his skin, murmurs and praise, a genuine sort of want as he ruts against him, mouth tasting Genji’s flesh greedily.

“Don’t take this the wrong way-“ McCree groans against a particularly sensitive spot on Genji’s chest. “But my jeans are killing me-“ Fingers dance over a plate of metal, need clear in the eyes of the other.

“You’re ridiculous,” Genji snorts with a slight hitch of his breath as teeth nips against him, sneaking his hand down and snagging hold of McCree’s jeans, hauling him up to a shocked noise and palms coming down flat on the floor behind Genji’s head as he landed with his legs spread on Genji’s chest.

Neither of them had thought to take it to bed but Genji thinks he rather likes this, smirking as he simply split McCree’s pants to a jerk of his hips as he was peeled free of them with wide brown eyes.

“That’s terrifyingly sexy,” McCree breathes, cock hard and straining against the red boxers. “You sure-“

“Just because I can’t come,” Genji says as he loops his arms around McCree, drawing him closer, “doesn’t mean I won’t satisfy my partner.”

“It was my idea though,” McCree hisses as Genji pulls him through the hole at the front with a careful measuring of his own dexterity and power.

McCree is girthy and long – in another life Genji would have been more than happy to have spent the night being plowed long and hard.

Genji flexes his jaw and McCree’s hand settles against the metal plating of his head as he jerks forward, burying deeper as Genji carefully worked him down his throat to swears and curses and gasps of his name.

If he closes his eyes he can almost feel the ghostly press of his arousal as McCree jerks desperately against him with a wet groan.

-

“You know, blowing off a bit of steam every now and then – I wouldn’t mind doing it again,” McCree says at the end of it, pupils still a bit blown, hair ruffled and fingers picking his strands from the folds of Genji’s hands with a strange sort of patience as Genji’s cooling fans work silently in the aftermath of it.

“Why?” Genji asks, tasting the salty come in his mouth with a flick of his tongue. “You could have anyone here – why me?”

McCree hums and then shrugs. “Why not you?”

“You never showed any inclination before,” Genji points out, allowing McCree to press down on his index fingers to unwind a particularly stubborn strand. “If this is about pity-“

“You’re a sexy, kick-ass ninja assassin,” McCree interrupts him, gaze lifting to catch his. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. Sex is sex.”

_Ninja assassin?_

“Besides,” McCree says, shifting and stretching out with a smirk as he dragged his eyes down Genji’s body. “Who wouldn’t want to be plowed by all of that? We just have to get a bit… creative. I’ve got some ideas.”

“Ideas,” Genji repeats, tasting it as he considers the other.

“Only if you want to, of course,” McCree tacks on a bit belatedly. “I mean, I enjoyed myself plenty-“

Sex will never be the same but that’s because Genji will never be the same. He’s something new, unfamiliar with the workings of his new body, disconnected in ways that is hard to put into words when Angela looks at him with attentive eyes and a clipboard in hand.

But McCree’s mouth had been soft and clever, Genji’s jaw aches pleasantly from the stretch, and he wonders what kind of look it might garner him to ask to have a _new_ cock made in the empty codpiece between his legs.

He thinks the old Genji would have gotten a kick out of it and maybe pieces of what he’d been still remains there, beneath the anger and hopelessness, the hatred and love that burn alike for his brother who had ruined him.

He realises a bit belatedly that McCree is rambling a bit nervously beside him and reaches out, pinching down on his nose.

“It was good,” Genji says with a lopsided little smile that makes McCree stare. “But before anything else, I have a favour to ask.”

-

McCree laughs at him and Genji grins as the other reaches out, tugging at the ridiculously orange fringe with a crinkle of the corners of his eyes.

It's not green, Genji isn't there yet, but it's a step, he thinks.

The beginning of something new.

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY NEW YEARS!
> 
> I am not terribly used to writing Genji so I hope this came across decently. I wanted to explore some of the horror of what was done to him but also wanted something soft and not too angsty since I'm kicking off the New Year with it. So - a bit of a hopeful ending. 
> 
> This is part of a gift exchange between myself and Nylazor. I am a fan of Hanzo and they're a fan of Genji so we switched it up with Jesse as the partner in both. So go check out what they did! 
> 
> I hang about tumblr as artsy-death if you're about there. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
